Review: Grace's Bistro Set (American Girl)

Every year American girl puts out a new "Girl of the Year", a limited one-year doll with a number of tie-in books and accessories.  Some of these sell out before the year is over, but the ones that don't usually go on sale.  I happened to be wandering through the American Girl Place Houston shop in December, and came across the 2015 doll's bistro set at a 30% discount.  Given my great love for doll chairs, it ended up coming home with me.

Grace's Bistro Set

The set is packed in a purple carboard box that's branded with both the American Girl and Girl of the Year logos.

The box.

Inside, the items are protected by two wedges of styrofoam.

Opening the lid...

Each item is individually wrapped in plastic, and the smaller items are double bagged together.

Some of the items contain warnings like this one:

Just in case you wanted to eat the plastic croissant, don't do it!

The set contains 14 items: a table, chair, seat cushion, menu board, menu stickers, menu, Eiffel Tower-shaped menu holder, plate, cloth table napkin, a bottle, a glass, plastic berries, a plastic croissant, and a plastic wedge of brie cheese.

The plate.

The menu

The quality of each item varies, with the metal frames of the chair and table leading the pack, while the flimsy plastic of the sign is significantly less impressive (although that surely kept the price down).

Surprisingly, the scale of the items varies as well: the berries are enormous relative to the size of the other food items, and the height of the table and chair aren't quite in line with each other.  In fact, the chair is significantly smaller than other AG chairs I own.

Grace's chair is dwarfed by Felicity's.

In fact, I actually thought that full-size AGs look a little oversized when sitting in it:

Cécile feels like a giant here.

At the same time though, the table seems like the right height for the size:

Standing with the table.

Now that's not a huge complaint against the set: I doubt that kids would be turned off by it, and for collectors, if you collect a variety of doll types you'll probably have other dolls who can use the chair, but I do think it's something that's worth noting for the AG-purists out there.

As for how other dolls fit with the items, let's take a look!

Hearts for Hearts Surjan is a little short for the table.

But she fits the chair perfectly.

Sasha Caleb is a good height for the table, but is a little too long legged for the chair.

.

.

MSD range dolls, like Lumedoll Atik here, are a little too tall
for the table.

SDC Miko is both a good height for the chair and can hold the glass in hand.
The glass is more in scale with his hands than with the bigger AG ones.

SD+ sized dolls like SDGou Claude here, are too large
for the furniture.

But they have the right size hands for some of the food items.

Overall, I have to say I'm very pleased with the set. Giant berries aside, I think it's a great piece for both play and display purposes, and I'm pleased to have had the chance to pick it up (especially at a discount!).

I don't own the full-sized Grace doll, but I think my mini Grace is looking
forward to eating that giant cheese, don't you?

ETA: Xanadu asked how these pieces would look with a YoSD-range doll, so to answer that question I took a couple of photos of Island Doll Kevin with the set (apologies for the lighting, in the interests of saving time I used my phone for these two):

The table is slightly higher than the top of his neck.

Seated all the way back, his feet just overhang the edge.